Re: C vs. 4GL

In article <3jniu4$6st@hippo.shef.ac.uk>, S.Woolrich@Sheffield.ac.uk (Sally) wrote: > In article <3iarc7$aqr@cssun.mathcs.emory.edu>, alan@po.den.mmc.com (Alan Popiel) says: <snip> > It is possible to read from text files by writing a few 'C' functions > to build into either your RDS runner, or your bespoke libraries, viz: > > f_open( <filename> ) where filename is the absolute or relative name > of the UNIX file in question, > > f_get( ) RETURNING text > > f_close() <snip> > We have something similar to this in our product which allows a 4GL > program to view a UNIX file. Obviously, it could use it as input > rather than just display the contents. Not an elegent solution but > a bit better than loading the text into the database, I think! May be less elegent but the 4GL soultion is much more portable for us running RDS. It means we don't have to find C compilers & development licences for all the hardware platforms we support. --------------------------------------,------------------------------------- Kerry Sainsbury, kerry@kcbbs.gen.nz | THE INFORMIX FAQ Quanta Systems, Auckland, New Zealand | kcbbs.gen.nz:/informix/* | mathcs.emory.edu:/pub/informix/faq/* +64 9 377-4473 (work) 266-6011 (home) | http://www.garpac.com/informix.html